Man on Wire

I went to see the film about Philippe Petit last night - the man who tight-rope-walked between the tops of the Twin Towers in 1974. It was sooooh inspiring. To have a dream of doing something like that and follow it through the years to completion is amazing. But it would have been impossible without his friends. Quite apart from their emotional support, their practical help was essential. Talking of support, I wouldn't be writing if Dave hadn't supported me. Oh, and Dave, do you have time to fix me up a tight-rope in the back garden this morning? I really, really want to have a go at it.

The order of work

Every author works in their own individual way. If you want to know how I first start to tackle a book, it's like this

1/ a theme

2/ the characters

3/ the plot and the structure

4/ the tone, the point of view and the voice

And at any time at all when I am considering and planning each of the above I will be trying to decide what the running motifs will be. What on earth am I on about? What I mean is an idea or subject that crops up throughout the book, so, for example, one of the running motifs in Zuzu's Petals is colour. Did you notice it?

I have outlined my main characters for the next book, though there is heaps of detail to add to them. This morning I am trying to nail the basic plot.

p.s. no, no, daisies have nothing to do with any of the running motifs in ZP, or anything else in this post, but this is my blog, and if I want to post my photographs here, I shall!

Sleepless

I lay awake for two hours last night - I know it was at least two hours, because I heard ten, eleven and twelve o'clock strike - trying to decide where my new book should be set. Eventually I decided, but this morning I feel too wrecked to write.

Runaway bride

I went to a wedding party last night. It was lovely to catch up with the 30 year old bride, whom I remember as a toddler ( oh, how ancient I am.) It was also very heartening to hear her say that she loved Zuzu's Petals, and that she could have run away with Rob - one of the male characters. It was sweet to think that someone else loved him as much as I do.

Character questions (but beware - ZP spoiler alert)

I did my blog post about Difficult Questions this morning (see below this one) and then I started work on my new novel - working title only - "But I told you last year that I loved you." This morning's task is to begin to build my main characters, so I delved into my files to find the questions that I use for this. I came across the the first notes I did on Rob Walker - one of the characters in Zuzu's Petals - and I thought you might be interested to see them.

Rob Walker

age 53

date of birth June 13th 1952

Sun in Gemini, Moon in Pisces, Merc in Gemini, Venus in Gemini, Mars in Scorpio,Ascendant Cancer

what is his job? illustrator, cartoonist

marital status divorced

children one daughter (27)

describe yourself – physically. "I am not as obese as I was, but could still do with losing a stone. Apart from my weight I don’t look bad for my age. I don’t mean I am good looking but that I don’t look too old."

what colour eyes and hair ? dark hair greying at the temples, brown eyes

what is your eyesight like? good

do you wear jewellery? “You must be joking. Who do you think I am? Michael Barrymore?"

what does he smell of? “Nothing I hope. But when I’ve been cycling I might smell a bit rank but then I have a shower and use Neutrogena shampoo and Johnsons baby powder.”

what is your most prized possession? my summer bike – the Condor

what style is your house done in? “That’s not how I think. I don’t think in terms of domestic style.” pared down – modern, spare

favourite food - “I try not to have favourite foods. I’m on a calorie restricted diet and I can’t afford to even think of food and favourite in the same sentence”

favourite plant/flower/tree - scented roses – they remind him of his (dead) mother

favourite book – Lance Armstrong’s biography, It’s not about the Bike; and Touching the Void

favourite film – Touching the Void – even though he thinks it didn’t do the book justice

telly programmes – satire, The thick of it, Bremner Bird and Fortune,…but only because there’s nothing better on; Ray Mears and any kind of survival programmes; Grand Designs – I like to see the couple working towards a plan

what magazines, if any, does he read? – Bicycling, back copies of Official Tour de France Guides

what type of music does he like? – Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan

what incident in his childhood – big or trivial – does he feel guilty about? teasing Roland Baker for being fat.

guilty secret – eating bacon sandwiches at a cyclists café when he is out

what is his recurrent/recent nightmare? he returns to his house to find it full of people holding a surprise party for him

does he think people are basically good or basically bad? bad

where does he buy his clothes? Hawkshead catalogue and the local Cycle Shop "Bella bought me a voucher from a posh website but they don’t know what to charge for their clothes. I can’t bring myself to spend it because the prices are so ridiculous."

what mannerism does he exhibit when he is nervous? "I clench my teeth so that the muscles in my cheeks twitch. The dentist says it’s bad for my teeth and I am trying to stop."

what are your commonest expressions?

to what does he habitually refer? – his bike, other peoples’ bikes, e.g. "look at those fluid seat stays!" "Did you see the way his chain rings shimmered in the sunshine?" Tour de France escapades/anecdotes/tales of heroism

what does he say when he bangs his toe? nothing. he grits his teeth

what does he say when he answers the phone? Yup?

when he says someone dies, how does he phrase it? "he kicked the bucket"

what does he think he wants? to live to be 130 – longer than the man who ran off with his wife

what does he really want? to be normal and have a normal social life and to feel able to start dating

Difficult Questions

A local newspaper contacted me this week and asked if I would like to answer 20 questions for one of their weekly columns. Most of the questions were easy to answer freely, such as -

"When you were a child, what did you dream of being when you grew up?"

But other questions were very personal, and I couldn't answer them honestly without feeling I was revealing things to the general public that I really didn't want to, such as -

"What has been the most rewarding personal experience of your life?"

"Are there any things you regret in your life?"

What do most people do, who appear in this kind of feature ? Do they tell the truth or make things up?

I declined the offer from the paper, but did another column they offered instead. When it appears I will post a link on my blog.

p.s. the honeysuckle above has nothing to do with questions, except that it could be my answer to "What is your favourite climbing plant flowering in your garden at the moment?"

Another quote from JKJ

Oh, to think I have got this far in my life without reading Three Men in a Boat. Here is another quote I like... "People who have tried it, tell me that a clear conscience makes you happy and contented; but a full stomach does the business quite as well, and is cheaper, and more easily obtained. One feels so forgiving and generous after a substantial and well-digested meal - so noble-minded, so kindly hearted."

Quote

I'm reading Three Men in a Boat for the first time - shock!

Here's a great quote where JKJ is talking about his inability to help his friend dress better - "The less taste a person has in dress, the more obstinate he always seems to be."

My favourite places

The Sheffield Telegraph has a piece about me and my favourite places in Derbyshire. Click here if you would like to read it. And here are photographs of a few of those places.

The view from the footbridge in Bakewell... The Monsal Trail... The view from Longstone Edge with some gorgeous hunk in the foreground - oh, that's one of my sons! Caseys shop, Great Longstone... A corner of my garden...

My blog's new look

I can't decide whether I like my new layout, or whether it is too light, too summery, too pretty.

How can it be too pretty?

I don't want people to come here and think "Oh, blimey, this woman doesn't know dark as well as light, she skips over the surface of life in a haze of sweet peas. She has no depth."

The allure of the mundane

The blog is a strange medium. When I read other people's blogs, I am fascinated by their accounts of the mundane. Well, that's true if their writing is reasonably accomplished, and as long as the design of their blog is attractive.

I am sitting here in bed. I am ill enough not to want to do any work, but bored enough to want to do something other than read Three Men in a Boat. So I thought I'd write a post about sitting in bed on a humid July day, looking out of the window at the sky and the trees, smelling the sweet peas in a vase on my dressing table. I thought I'd write about the vile virus I have and how this morning when I woke up ill at 4 a.m. I not only felt like death, I also felt overwhelmed by depression. I felt so blue that I decided the illness was psychosomatic. So I started to write a post and then thought "Hang on, do people really want to read this?" and decided they didn't. So I stopped.

A date at Harewood House

Next Saturday - August 2nd - I shall be at the Yorkshire Day Festival at Harewood House near Leeds. I'll be speaking about Zuzu's Petals and signing copies. I'd love to meet readers of Plotting for Beginners and/or Zuzu's Petals. Why not come along?

Oh boy oh boy oh boy!

My son has moved me onto a new version of Blogger which means I can play around with colours and fonts and then switch them back the next day if I change my mind. It's very exciting, and one more thing to waste my time on when I don't want to get down to writing.

Publication in the USA

Zuzu's Petals will be published in America next spring. You may read otherwise on Amazon, but they've got it wrong.

Zuzu's Petals launch party

Before the guests arrived... Taking a peek at the fabulous grub... Here come the first of the guests... The glamorous bar-tender in the conservatory... Reading an excerpt... A stack of Zuzu's... After the reading... The view from Scarthin... Signing an odd one in a corner... Giving the results of the prize quiz... The view from upstairs at Scarthin... Toasting the host... A restorative walk the day after... Photographs above were taken by Isaac Hepworth. Thanks, Ise.

p.s. Mary Dalgleish won the prize, and when she got home, Gerry ate it...

The writer's life

In the huge and continuing cause of PR for Zuzu's Petals, I recently wrote a piece for a local paper on the topic My Favourite Places. One of the places was a local cafe, where I said I like to meet a writing friend and have a good moan about the writing life.

A friend who read the piece before I sent it off said "You can't possibly say you complain about the writing life! There are people out there who have really grotty jobs. How are they going to feel when they read it?"

So I guess I can't complain about it here, either. But I will just say that I always smile at a wonderful quote in an old M*A*S*H episode, when a man who has just fashioned a bust of Colonel Potter says "An artist's life has so few rewards."

I was discussing this with another writing friend, who nodded in complete understanding, and then went on to tell me that she had just printed off the rules of women's rugby from the internet as research for her current novel, and then got herself a smoked salmon sandwich and got in the bath with it, and the rules. That sounds like a nice way to do research, so maybe there are some compensations for tiny royalties and the impossibiity of getting reviews and...

p.s. the picture is of my back garden last week (click on it to enlarge.)

Feedback

A writer friend has just emailed me to tell me she's read Zuzu's Petals, and she's sent me a full- page critique. Fantastic!

The best thing is that she says I made her cry, which apparently is very unusual. I was interested that it wasn't the father's death that upset her, but a stage in the romantic storyline. She gives me the page number. It takes a writer to tell another writer at which page they started to snivel and at which page they got out their hankie. Writers need to know these things.

But which line was it, Jan?

Thomas the Tank Engine books should be banned

I had a great morning yesterday, looking after my grandsons. Everywhere you tread in their house there are trains. I like trains. I like train sets - I used to go trainspotting as a child, and I love to go now with the little ones. There: my train-loving credentials are sound.

Unfortunately, T and G's bookshelves are also infested with trains. I enjoy the Little Red Train series - they are imaginative and fun: the illustrations offer loads of scope for conversation, and the text for excitement and interesting sound effects. But whoever thought of bringing back from the fifties the execrable, the outdated, the deadly, the mind-blowingly boring Thomas the Tank Engine Series (that I am not even going to bless with italics)? Whoever it was must be delighted with the financial rewards, but ************! Those books do my head in! And so do the videos. If you want a good video, what's wrong with Bob the Builder? If you want a good book, there are so, so, so many wonderful books for under fives e.g. by Shirley Hughes, Julia Donaldson, Judith Kerr, Lauren Child, etc etc etc.

Thomas the Tank Engine books should be consigned to the recycling bin along with the d-r-e-a-d-f-u-l Mr Men series.

Meanwhile, back on the sofa, under a heap of cushions, even more fun than trains or reading, is pretending you are a baby chick breaking out of its shell. Oh, it's so much fun to be 3 years old.

p.s. Someone just told me that TTTE books are helpful in teaching autistic spectrum disorder children about non-verbal expression. In that case, keep the books, but make them prescription only.

Thanks, Jo

There's a feature about me and the inspiration for Zuzu's Petals in the Sheffield Star today. It's so nice to have a piece written about me that is accurate and honest, where the journalist obviously listened to what I said and reported well. Thank you, Jo Davison - you're a star.

Read the piece here.

Monsaldale

As Sally Howe is holidaying from her blog (with the excuse that she's too busy publicising her new novel Fast Work) and currently contributing nothing to the world-wide appreciation of the Peak District in general and Monsaldale in particular, here is a picture of Monsaldale which I took before the cow parsley began to fade. (Phew, that was a long sentence.)

Like Sally, I am busy working on publicity for my new book - Zuzu's Petals - out now in hardback, and on July 3rd in paperback. I am beginning to see the value of literary agents. If I had one I could sit back and leave all the PR palaver to her. I don't know why Sally isn't blogging - she has an agent to sort all this stuff out.

Just what I need - someone to mastermind my PR

Click on the pic to see what she's reading.

The things authors will do for a plug

The season of rushing around trying to get publicity for Zuzu's Petals is here. Authors have to try to get in the papers or on the radio to publicise their new book. If you can't get in with an article specifically about you and your book, then you try to sneak in some other way, while insisting you will still get a plug for the book.

Last month I was interviewed and photographed by a glossy women's magazine that was doing a feature on the craft revival. They were interested in my patchwork quilting, so the focus of the piece was quilting, which is fine. The photograph is pretty and my son says they have photoshopped it so my teeth look whiter and my eyes are bright. That's a first! They also remembered to mention Zuzu's Petals.

But... The piece takes a few random facts I told them, and woven them into a story the editor already had in her mind. They quote me as saying that I started quilting as a result of a fire and then they quote me as saying "The fire also inspired me to start writing my novel Zuzu's Petals..." (not true) "But my real passion is quiltmaking." (Also not true.) It sounds as though I dashed off the novel in a spare afternoon, just to fill in the time while I was waiting for my sewing machine to be serviced.

Oh well, the book is mentioned, and they are the first publication to ever photoshop me so I look better than I do in real life. Top marks for image.

p.s. email me if you want to know the name of the magazine.

An invitation to the launch

Look what I got! They've finally arrived...hardback and paperback copies of Zuzu! Naturally I get them early. Come on - it's the only perk authors get! You can buy the hardback on the 1st June, and the paperback on July 3rd. Would you like to come to the launch of the paperback edition on Thursday July 3rd, 6 p.m. - 7.30 p.m. at Scarthin Books, Cromford, Derbyshire? There'll be wine and nibbles and lots of chat with fascinating people (I don't mean me), and I'll be reading from the book and signing copies. If you'd like to come, please will you email me so we know how many people to expect.

Colours

While I am twiddling my thumbs, waiting for the fun to start (i.e. my paperback launch on July 3rd at Scarthin Books) I thought I'd post you some pictures from my recent holiday. I tried to concentrate on colour this time, as my supremely-talented son does.

All the photographs - apart from the gate- were taken on Lindisfarne.

Below: the castle is in the background...

Below: the priory ruins are in the background...

Below: same again...

My first endorsement for Zuzu's Petals

This is what the author Lucy Diamond has said about Zuzu's Petals:

"Full of warmth and wit, this is a romantic and often very moving novel, with a wonderful cast of characters."

In a few days I will have a new hardback copy in my trembling hands. I'm going to dig my sweet pea patch now, to calm myself down.